Dinner Party

by Sarah Gilmartin

  ‘Well, really, Helen.’ Their mother gave a tight smile. ‘Don’t encourage them.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Principal Clerkin,’ Kate said quickly. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  Once the words were out of her mouth, she felt the giddiness evaporate, their special twin power of invincibility disappear. Across the table, her sister’s face had grown cold, inert. The principal nodded at Kate and then everyone looked at Elaine. She murmured an apology, frowning for a finish.

  ‘We’ll put it down to midsummer madness.’ The principal held out a hand to say goodbye.

  ‘But, Raymond,’ her mother said, grasping the hand. ‘I wanted to talk to you about Raymond.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘What you said last June.’

  He took his hand back. ‘You’ll have to remind me.’

  ‘His abilities. His, what was the word—his prowess in the summer exams.’

  ‘Indeed,’ the principal smiled. ‘He did well in all seven subjects.’

  ‘Eight! He’s doing applied maths outside of school.’

  ‘Of course, eight.’

  Kate felt the spark of a giggle still in her. When Ray was being lazy around the farm, her father would say, tell Eight Hundred Points to get his bum out of bed.

  ‘Well, Martin, I’m afraid to tell you that he’s gone off the rails completely over the summer and gotten it into his head that he wants to do physiotherapy instead of medicine. What I need is a strong man to talk him out of it.’

  Kate felt the insult to her father deep inside her. She could see it on her aunt’s face too.

  ‘Physiotherapy?’ the principal said.

  ‘A glorified masseuse! All those brains.’

  ‘Physiotherapy is high enough points. It’s no doddle.’

  ‘It’s not medicine.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But if he has his heart set on physio?’ said her aunt.

  ‘You’ve no children, Helen,’ her mother said. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to see their potential and want so much for them.’

  Her aunt looked out the window. The rain had stopped and the glistening grass looked fresh and lonely.

  ‘It’s just, I care—so much,’ her mother said to the principal.

  As he droned on about parental guidance, Kate had a longing to give her mother a hug. It was true that she cared about them very much. No one could deny it. Their mother spent her life in the Jeep, bringing them to horse riding, or piano, or grinds after school. And she always had their back against outsiders. Years ago, she’d had a little cheat from senior infants in tears after foul play in an egg-and-spoon race. More recently, she’d made a list of all the dunce teachers in the Community and had somehow managed to keep the twins out of their classes. Kate had often heard adults say that Mammy was a formidable woman, but she was only now beginning to see what they meant. Herself and her siblings had been given so many advantages. She wondered what happened to children with ordinary mothers.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll have a word with Raymond?’ her mother was saying now. ‘I’m sure if he keeps his head he’ll get the six hundred for the school. Wouldn’t that be nice? To see the Community get national acclaim for their results.’

  ‘Superb,’ the principal beamed. ‘No better man to do it than Raymond Gleeson. And I’m a big fan of Peter too, of course.’ He winked at no one in particular.

  Her mother’s face was radiant. She looked, to borrow that disgusting phrase of Elaine’s, as if she’d creamed herself.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ her mother said. ‘Peter will call tomorrow.’

  The principal told the twins to watch their manners, said good-bye to their aunt and pumped their mother’s hand one more time.

  Kate sucked in her breath and waited. So much had happened, a whole lifetime of consequences. This could go either way. She tried to nudge Elaine under the table but her sister had moved her leg again.

  ‘Well,’ her mother said to their aunt. ‘Can you credit it?’

  Aunt Helen was still staring at the gardens. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Mark my words—Peter will be back with Hilary before you know it. And Raymond Gleeson, the principal said, is just the man to get six hundred points. Did you hear that, girls? Your brother Raymond.’

  ‘The big lummox?’ said Elaine.

  Her perfectly straight teeth were all on show. Oh, Elaine, she lived on the edge, and she loved it there too. Her sister took up their mother’s water—the only glass that had anything left in it—and downed the drink in one gulp. Kate looked to her aunt for help, but she was no use either, grinning like a monkey at Elaine. They looked like they might high five over the silverware.

  ‘You watch yourself, Elaine Gleeson.’ Their mother pointed a finger, the nail varnish the same colour as her pearls. ‘Or I’ll tell your father about your outburst. You’re lucky Principal Clerkin has a sense of humour.’

  ‘That fella?’ said their aunt. ‘Ah, Bern, he wouldn’t know a joke if it kicked him in the bollocks.’

  Elaine whooped with laughter.

  Her mother tried to hide the smile but it came out, her face radiant once more. She was so beautiful when she was happy. ‘You’re a disgrace, Helen,’ she said. ‘But I knew we were right to come to the Mount. No one does tea like the Mount.’

  The day, it seemed, had been saved. Kate looked over at her sister to share the moment but could find no way in to her happiness. She remembered, suddenly, the random Saturday last summer when her parents had been fighting and Helen had taken the twins on their own to the cloudy-windowed tea room beside the community hall. A simple fruit scone and a cup of tea, the clear run of the butter as it melted. No excess, none of the agony of choice. Just the three of them having a laugh. It seemed so long ago.

  The endless summer gave way to a period of frenzy about the start of a new school year. Second year, no longer the babies of the Community, but proper teenagers who knew the right kind of shoes to buy for the first day back. Elaine had sussed it out from her pony friends—white-soled decks in any colour you liked, except brown. Elaine went for racing-car green and Kate chose navy.

  One afternoon when their mother was at her charity ball meeting, they went into her bedroom and modelled their uniforms in her full-length double mirror on the front of the built-in wardrobes. Elaine fixed both their ties to just below the second button, though Kate preferred the knot closer to the top, hiding her neckline. Earlier that summer when she’d fallen asleep in the garden, Ray had connected the bigger freckles together with a red marker. Now he was calling her Join-the-Dot. Kate did up the second button of her blouse. Better to be prissy than freckly any day. After spraying their mother’s Shalimar all over their musty jumpers, they turned left and right in the mirrors. They rolled up the waistlines of their tartan skirts, tried the thin tights and the ribbed tights, put on the monstrous navy blazers. ‘If we’re lucky, they might fit us by sixth year,’ said Elaine. She turned up her collar like Elvis and pursed her lips in the mirror.

  Next, they held their blouses tight against their chests to see how much bra was showing. Even in side profile, Kate had barely anything. Elaine’s were much bigger, practically fourth-year-sized breasts, and Kate couldn’t understand what she’d done wrong. ‘Yeah, you’re way smaller,’ Elaine said. ‘But there are exercises you can do.’ They both froze in the mirror, admiring Elaine’s mounds. Maybe it was the cigarettes, Kate thought. Maybe she should take up smoking.

  They heard the gravel on the driveway and legged it out of the bedroom.

  ‘What the hell?’ said Ray, as they booted past him on the landing. He rubbed his eyes. ‘Did I sleep until September?’

  Peter came thundering out of his door. ‘Where is it?’ he said to Ray.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My leather jacket. Is nothing sacred?’

  Ray shrugged.

  ‘You know what, Ray?’ said Peter. ‘I can’t wait to see the back of you.’

  ‘Mutual.’ Ray pushed past him down the stairs.

>   Peter was being very optimistic. It would be a long year, Kate could tell, before any of them would see the back of Ray. She felt a prod at her side and saw Elaine eyeballing her. There’d be war if they couldn’t sneak the jacket back before Peter copped on.

  It wasn’t just the breasts. Differences were starting to show up everywhere, differences and distances between them that had never been there before. Elaine no longer liked to go down to the brook at the end of the field and play jump-over. Or she would huff when Kate and Ray put on The Simpsons. Or she would get jealous if Daddy brought Kate out on the farm, even though she hated farming herself. Or she would tell Kate she needed the bedroom immediately—their bedroom—and Kate would have to wander the house with Copernicus, searching for things to do. Right now she was down in the poky extension behind the kitchen where Peter and Daddy had stuck her piano when it wouldn’t fit in the good room. She started to play ‘Für Elise’, her fingers gliding easily over the keys. Halfway through the piece, she hit the high bit and Copernicus growled and ran out of the room. ‘Sorry, doggie,’ she said, still playing, racing now to get to the end. She had a sudden flash, some twin synapse firing, that Elaine was up to no good.

  On her way to the bedroom, Kate turned sideways on the stairs to let Ray go by. He was in Peter’s brand-new Fila hoodie. ‘He’ll kill you,’ she said. Ray put a finger to his lips and then sliced it across his neck.

  Kate rapped on the door. ‘I’m coming in,’ she said, pressing the handle.

  ‘Get out!’

  Elaine was hunkered between the beds, sorting something, which was very unlike her. There was a weird smell like a rusted tractor.

  ‘I said—get out.’ Elaine threw herself forward on the bed.

  Kate went over, pulled at her shoulders. ‘What are you doing? What’s there?’ But she sprang back when she saw: lots of different-sized tampons, their discarded packaging like sweet wrappers on the ground. They looked like woolly bullets, except the last one which was squashed and dirty-looking.

  ‘Gross!’ said Kate. ‘Use the bathroom.’

  ‘Ray was in there for ages.’ Elaine turned, a vicious look across her face. ‘Oh, what would you know? Just get out—lemme alone.’

  She burst into tears and Kate felt bad, like she’d taken something that didn’t belong to her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Do you want a hot-water bottle? Cosmopolitan says—’

  Elaine flashed her a look so she stopped talking.

  ‘OK,’ Elaine said eventually. ‘Get me one. But don’t let Ray see.’

  ‘Make sure you work the conditioner into the lengths,’ Elaine said.

  She had her head upside down over the side of the new claw-foot bathtub and her words were muffled by the blanket of thick, wet hair. Kate stood behind her, legs akimbo, trying to get the shampoo out with the spray-hose. There was no point putting in conditioner if there were suds.

  ‘Lots of conditioner,’ Elaine said. ‘I need to beat Susan Hinchy’s shine.’

  This was a new thing of hers since they’d started second year, this obsession with winning.

  ‘It’s not a competition.’ Kate worked her fingers through the tangle at the back.

  ‘I never said it was. I don’t care—’

  ‘Shut up and let me do this,’ said Kate. ‘Before she catches us.’

  ‘Just do a good job.’

  It made it worse that Elaine pretended not to be competitive. Of course she was. They couldn’t play cards any more for her strops, and her cheating. She’d snuck in a fresh pack from the bridge boards the last time. Ray spotted that she kept getting triple fives. And she was doing it in everyday things too: hairstyles, Creme Egg contests, racing off the bus from school up the driveway. As if Kate would ever want to race her home. It was so annoying. They were still best friends but they were best enemies now too.

  Down below, Kate heard the scrape of the fire grate in the television room. She listened for footfall but couldn’t pick it up with the water. ‘Stop moving.’ She started to panic. ‘We don’t have much time.’ They could not get caught tonight. Their mother was already in a mood over Peter and Hilary Clerkin. He was refusing to visit her and no one, not even Mammy, knew why.

  ‘Chill,’ said Elaine, which was another new thing of hers. She’d dropped the ‘out’. She was too cool for it.

  Kate spread the conditioner, not bothering to do the crown. Their mother’s documentary on the Nazis would soon be over. Why couldn’t she watch soaps all night like other mothers? Why did she think the television was for learning?

  ‘Comb it through,’ said Elaine.

  ‘You can do it in the bedroom,’ Kate said. ‘It’s like you want us to get caught.’ Their mother had a new policy. They were only allowed to wash their hair once during the week, and Elaine had already wasted her go on Monday. It was the latest in a series of new rules at Cranavon. As if the twins didn’t have enough to be getting on with at school. It was like their mother was in competition with Principal Clerkin, and there were no winners, only losers—little loser lemmings who were not, under any circumstance, allowed to question the orders no matter how random they seemed. Only last week she’d forbidden them to wear thermal vests, had taken one from Elaine’s drawer and ripped it apart with her fingers. It had been a most magical thing to watch. For a finish, she’d thrown the strips of cloth high in the air and burst out laughing. The waste, think of the waste! The twins hadn’t known what the hell was going on but like always, their mother’s laughter was infectious. The three of them had collapsed onto Elaine’s bed for ages, until finally, Daddy came pounding up the stairs and said he was sick of living in a madhouse.

  ‘Give it here.’ Elaine snatched the hose. Kate wasn’t ready for her and she dropped it on the bathroom tiles. The spray went everywhere, all over her stripy pyjamas.

  ‘Shit,’ said Kate. ‘Shit, shit.’

  Elaine was laughing. She turned off the tap and patted her way like a blind person over to the towels. ‘You’re so funny when you curse. Like a nun.’

  ‘I am not.’

  But then the stiff television room door creaked and they both looked at each other in horror.

  ‘Girls,’ their mother’s voice was in the hallway. ‘Girls, what’s going on up there?’

  The Saturday of the Halloween midterm had not started well: three plates and the ceramic kitchen clock, the primary casualties of the morning’s preparations. In the history of dramatic events at Cranavon, there had been worse. But Kate’s heart was still agitated, even though the house was quiet now, only the ghost-creaking on the landing, which Peter said was not a ghost at all but the pipes shrinking and expanding with the weather. Kate took a tissue from the locker and patted her eyes. She’d already made both their beds but was tempted to destroy her own housework, get back under the duvet and start the morning again.

  Instead she lay shivering on the covers in her body top and denim shorts. The ceiling was covered in tiny green stars and comets and planets that glowed in the dark when the lights were off. On the carpet between their beds, the offending item—a pink glitter riding crop that Elaine had bought in secret from one of the girls in her camp. Another secret, another little nick. Kate was sure that Elaine’s pony friends all had their periods already. She’d crouched on the landing last weekend and listened to her sister squeal and giggle on the old rotary phone down below for nearly a full hour. Some terrible leak for some girl in jodhpurs who was now known as Red Riding Hood. Kate didn’t even feel sorry for her. At least she was able to leak.

  This morning had begun like most show mornings, early and high-pitched and full of bustle. Wardrobes banging, hairdryers blasting, the muttering that was not really muttering as it could be heard all over the house. On the morning of the shows, there was, everyone knew it, vast potential for trouble. It was as if their mother couldn’t tell the difference between excitement and panic. High doh, their father called it, before disappearing into the fields.

  Oh, Elaine. Kate could kill her. As if
their mother was ever going to let her bring a pink glitter riding crop to a competition where there would be actual photographers from the paper and all the other riders in their serious blacks and creams. Kate reckoned her sister had done it on purpose, after the fight about the jodhpurs. All Mammy had said was that she might want to wear the pair with the side zip, that the darker beige would be more flattering. She hadn’t mentioned her thighs at all. That was just Elaine and her feelings again, turning every normal situation into a drama. Well, she had gotten her drama. They all had. Their mother in floods of tears in her royal blue dressing gown, smashing the back wall of the kitchen with one, two, three plates, and it was the last one that did for the clock.

  Kate curled up on the duvet and told herself it was OK now. They were both gone, her sister and her mother, tear-stained into the Jeep, and late, crunching down the driveway and bashing over the cattle grid. She hated when her mother drove fast and angry in the car, careening around the bendy back roads into Tullow, giving two fingers to the cars that dared to blow the horn and calling the drivers piss artists, which was her new favourite expression. Kate and Elaine had started saying it too, and even Ray occasionally, though he claimed to be nothing like Mammy. Piss artist. There was something very catchy about it.

  Taking her book, Kate went down to the good room, pushed open the door and felt light-headed as she walked around the staid, polished atmosphere. The bridge boards were in a neat stack on the dining table, ready for Tuesday. She lay on the couch, careful not to disturb the perky gold cushions. In the distance, the harvester hummed. Peter and her father had been out in the fields since daybreak. You had to start early, when there was moisture in the air. Kate had gone to watch the first day, to say goodbye to the spring barley that she’d helped sprinkle, to see the tractor make short work of all that effort and growth. But it was boring after a while—up a field, turn, down a field, turn—and she was getting too big to sit in the cab with her father.